A COMPREHENSIVE, HIGH-RESOLUTION DATABASE OF HISTORICAL AND PROJECTED CLIMATE SURFACES FOR WESTERN NORTH AMERICA

摘要

With growing concern over global climate change, interpolated climate data have become increasingly important for biological research, natural resource management, and infrastructure planning. Virtually every study in the field of climate change impact and adaptation requires a variety of data that may include long-term reference data, historical time series, climate change projections, or information about recent climate trends. Such data are usually not easily accessible at the appropriate resolution, in a consistent format, and for a comprehensive set of relevant climate variables. Several comprehensive efforts exist to provide researchers as well as nonspecialists with such databases, typically in the format of gridded spatial data (E. H. Girvetz et al. reviewed such databases in their 2009 PLoS One article). However, gridded climate data with high resolution, many climate variables, long historical time series, and comprehensive future projections can become very large and difficult to use forresearchers and resource managers.